


Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks

by PaxVobis



Series: SN'B Fibs [2]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Black Metal, Count Grishnackh, Crying, Fights, Flashbacks, Hanoi Rocks - Freeform, Heroin, Hot Tub, Hotels, I Believe I'm A Chicken, John Peel, Kerrang!, Looking At Photos And Feeling Sad, M/M, Oh No No We Don't Miss People, Oh We Can Hardly Tell That They're Gone!, Paradise Lost, Past Drug Use, Play Fighting, Post-Episode: s02e16-17 Snakes N' Barrels II, Puns & Word Play, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, Runke Snogge, Season/Series 02, Sexual Harassment, Slut Shaming, Snakes N' Barrels, Temper Tantrums, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 18:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11629662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Pickles is plunged into his fit-scattered memories of a day spent in a Brighton hotel on tour with Tony by a chance find of an oldKerrang!magazine featuring Snakes N' Barrels - a comparison he'd rather not make.For Sneks.M15+ only, implied sex and drug use.





	Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sneks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneks/gifts).



Since Dethklok had conquered the world, it was rare for Pickles to see Snakes N’ Barrels material shoved across the red carpet barriers for his appraisal, but once in a blue moon it still happened. 

It was usually either a stage photo or that stupid picture of him leaning across his knees in the blue bandana and Levis in '88, before their actual fame but at the height of his piercing beauty - something he hadn't realised at the time, but now, having lost it, recognised acutely - and so rebranded to sell to teenage girls, or teenage boys as the case may be - whatever.  He usually signed it quickly and pushed it back at the fans without chatting to them.  It was humiliating enough that his metal fame had not eclipsed his hood ornament era without having to draw the attention of his current bandmates to those doe-eyed,  _idiot_  pictures of him - or worse, have them recognise him from a time before. 

It had been a quickly established rule with Dethklok from the word go that Pickles' previous musical experience was of zero consequence and zero merit, and therefore received  _zero_  mention.  So, formerly recruited for his pretty-boy features for a band that needed a strut and a voice and nothing else, he finally felt appreciated for his hard work in the band.  Irreplaceable, however his doubts may have shadowed him.

But this time was different.  They were walking back to the train, Pickles trailing behind the band at large because of a recent revival in interest about Snakes N’ Barrels - you know, Where Are They Now  _Now_?  He'd seen the boys, seen their heads absolutely stewed.  The whole band was shaken (especially Toki for some reason not made totally clear to Pickles, and which wouldn't be made clear for months yet), Rikki Kixx had brain trauma, whatever, dead and buried.  Metaphorically.  And yeah, it had been deeply upsetting to see them that way, and yeah, Pickles had shoved it into his little locker of things he did not think about and sunk it to the bottom of the ocean within him in chains and anchors. 

 From out of the yammering crowds waving things in his face faster than he could scrawl "PiKL X" in sloppy shorthand to dismiss them, the last arm of the Xes trailing off across the glossy photo paper as he fought through the fans, and barely a foot from the train came the cursed object in question.  It hit his stomach, thrusted at him from a low vantage point and half winding him as he clutched his free hand over it to shove it back, and he had meant to put it straight through the fan's mouth, balling the magazine paper in his fist in fury, but at that moment Nathan had grabbed him by the collar like a shepherd's crook around his neck and yanked him away, magazine in hand. 

"For fuck's sake Pickles, you're keeping us from beer," he snarled, and dragged him into the train in time for the door to snap shut on the fans like an iron trap, "I swear if this bullshit doesn't die down soon, I'm gonna stage a mutiny.  On my own.  And I'll be the lead singer of Snakes N' Buttholes, and everyone will hate it and they'll leave you the fuck alone, and also you'll be dead cuz the mutiny, so... uh..."

Pickles looked up into Nathan's dull gaze, his mind having wandered, and wrung the magazine in his hands.  " _Please_ ," he wheeked, "Kill me.  Better night in than this shit."  And he left Nathan to it, shoving past him in a direct line to the ice box that had been put out for them, overflowing with beers.

Once he'd gotten his hand around one and popped off the top on the edge of the box, leaving the plastic scratched where his cap had gouged into it, Pickles stood vacantly to cool down and finally turned his attention to the crumpled magazine screwed in his fist.  An old issue of  _Kerrang!_ , a gossipy UK metal tabloid - dang, he should have ditched it when he had the chance.  But at least it was a little different to the usual material shoved at him.  This one was genuinely from the early days, ’89 he was pretty sure, showing a very old press photo on the cover of Snakes N’ Barrels at the very start of their careers, the rest of the band blatantly older than the teenager at their helm, brooding, and Pickles looking like a cheap streetwalker with the snakeskin belt and silver jeans and a Led Zep t-shirt with the sleeves cut off.  And makeup - in England they'd called it slap, he remembered that, he'd liked it.   _Slap._

The headline said,  _SNAKES N’ BICKIES – We Join America’s Baddest Knitting Circle For Tea And Natter!_   The British tabloids loved their wordplay, and they loved to insult bands - pretend to be on your side and then screw you over.  This had been their first of two tours to Britain, and the only one specifically touring the isle - the other just a stop-over on a Europe tour, a night in London he'd never remember.  On this tour, they had been small enough that they'd had to go to the fans, rather than expect them to come to Snakes.

On this tour, in London, a vile roach of a man who called himself a photographer, who their manager had sold to them based on work he'd done for the Sex Pistols, had dressed Pickles verbatim as a rent boy in mesh and faded Levis and had him pose outside a public toilet, a context Pickles had not fully understood until the photos had been published and a co-headliners in Dublin, a group of disgusting, burnt out Irish punks with crooked, stained teeth, scarred faces and mouths full of chewing tobacco, pointed it out to him and jeered at his confusion.  Pickles had a faint, Guinness-washed memory of having his ass grabbed viciously by one of them 'as a lark', the short nails curling hard into his flesh through the tight denim he wore, and having to laugh as he contained his rage and Tony almost punching the guy, raising his fist for it, but dropping it again when he saw Pickles' strained grin.  Pickles had taken it out on the photographer instead, demanded their money back and the issue withdrawn, but the tabloid refused.  They could do that in Britain.  Being a rockstar and angry wasn't enough.  In fact, it made them laugh – gave them fuel for slander for years.

Feeling the stale bile rise in him over this memory Pickles ripped open the magazine to scrutinise what he was sure was going to be pictures of him effete in mesh, taking the stairs up around the train to the level that overlooked the furnace as he did so to ditch it directly into the flames as soon as he saw it.  But he froze when he saw the images instead, stopping with one foot on the top platform and the magazine pages arched where they were held in his balled fists, the bottle of beer dangling from his tense fingers precariously.  This was their first tour.  This was Brighton.

Standing with the heat of the furnace glowing against his skin, Pickles could feel the tickling memory of Brighton's skeleton-deep late autumn cold against his body, the way it crept in through the rotting plaster of the cheap hotel Howie had shacked them up in despite the promising aura of the radiator when he'd held his hands close, dappled white and pink in the cold.  It wasn't a notch on Wisconsin in the deep winter, but everyone they’d spoken to had promised the band that in Britain they were used to the cold, that every building was insulated and heated and he wouldn't even notice.  But they hadn't been prepared for being poor in Britain, which was a different experience entirely.

Fucked up.  Pickles took the last few steps to the chaise lounge and plopped down on it, taking a swig of his beer - cold against the furnace's heat - and tuning out of the others' voices drifting up from below as he inspected the article.  Yeah, it said right there - Brighton.  It was deeply amusing to Pickles right at that moment that he remembered the floral wallpaper of the hotel's dining area, a pseudo-pub where the band had been treated to tea by the magazine's guy when he remembered so little else about that time of his life.  He barely even remembered what that guy had looked like, but - older than him, maybe.  Yeah.  Wearing a denim jacket with fleece lining.  Pickles had been so jealous of that jacket, with his bare shoulders, putting out a cigarette in a saucer, the china stained with milky tea he'd spilt from the dainty cup and painted with pink roses.

There was a photo of that here, of Pickles smiling up at the photographer while the rest of the band pouted - or, in Tony's case, scowled - around him and his arm crooked as he delicately put out another cigarette into the saucer filled with ash and butt ends.  In the British's photos, his hair looked auburn rather than scalded red, his eyes gray instead of grass snake green, his skin mottled pink and freckled and red around his nose where America made him porcelain doll white.  They'd been all about flaws, Britain, all about where your clothes stood up stiff from grime and where you chewed your nails down, the chlamydia your drummer had gotten off a whore in Glasgow (where Pickles had worn a kilt), the hole in your cowboy boots that let the slush in.  They even ate up his trackmarks, got him to take off his coat so they showed when he grinned over a teacup, pinkie extended daintily, his face otherwise innocent, childish, glowing. 

British horse was dirtier shit, almost as dirty as LA.  Pickles had said this in the interview – he traced over the printed line now with his finger, giving a short sniff before he took another slug of beer.  Someone downstairs was calling his name and he called out, “Fuck off!” and read closer.  A whole lot of bullshit, but it was coming back to him now.  This wasn’t ’89 at all, but ’91, just after _Abuse Your Delusion._   Must have been worth a lot.  Pickles had still been a teenager, and regarding his face now in the pictures, he thought he looked it.  Fucking grim, being on heroin at 19 – Tony had a lot to answer for.  But... it had been a good time, before all the shit rained down.  When he was still happy to be alive, even if he was smacked out.

“ _PICKLE_.”

Pickles jumped in shock as Toki blurted right in his ear, having bounced up the stairs and ambushed him without him even registering a footstep.  “Fuck, Toki,” he muttered, holding his head and closing the magazine around his hand before the Norwegian could get an eyeball in.  “Whadda you want?”

“Gons get de hot tubs goins, you gots to puts you hand up like dis – ”  Toki raised his hand, and it took Pickles raising his hand half way in mirror before he clocked that the rest of the band were divided in the action and that he was unwittingly participating in a vote.  He quickly lowered it again.

“Nice try, but nah, Toki.  Can’t be fucked changin’,” he said, tapping Toki on the chest with the magazine as the man groaned at him.

“Oh please Pickle!  Oh!  Yous, joys kill dildo!”

“Yeah yeah.  I’m okay with it.” 

He was not okay with the huge hand venturing out towards his magazine.  “What’s so good you readins, Pickle?  Better’n hots tub?!”

“Nuh-uh!  No!”  It had been a mistake not to teach Toki that snatching was out of line.  Too late now; the magazine was whipped out of Pickles’ sweaty fingers in one swift movement.  “Fuck you Toki, give it back!”

Toki moved it out of Pickles’ reach, holding it above his own head as he read the cover and catching Pickles’ fist flying for his face in his other huge hand and holding it tight as Pickles battled to wrestle it free without spilling his beer.  “Oh, cool!  Looks!  Ams got dat bus dat de Count puts _on_ fires, ha-ha!  Fuck ‘em, Paradise _Losers_.”

Pickles wrenched his hand free and jumped up to get back his magazine, hopping up a step onto the lounge and teetering on his toes as Toki easily moved the magazine away.  “What the fuck you talkin’ bout!  Toki, give it _back!_ ”

“Para-dicks Losts.  Runke tells me dey puts dis bus of dese dildos on fire, ha-ha!  You sees!”  Toki held out the magazine cover to Pickles, pointing to a tiny line of text that indicated British doom metallers Paradise Lost had had their tour bus torched by anonymous antagonists on Norway.   Pickles didn’t care much and took the opportunity to snatch it back out of his hands to a yell of, “HEY!  I WAS READINS DAT!”

“Toki, leave Pickles to his gay ass magazine,” came Nathan’s scolding from below, standing with the others by the snack table and nursing a beer, and Toki turned around to yell back at him.

“I ALREADIES GIVES IT BACK TO ‘IMS, DICKHOLE.”

“Well, uh... good.”

Toki made for the magazine again but Pickles held it close to his chest, flattening himself against the back of the lounge, and the guy gave an angry huff and stomped away downstairs again.  Pickles just tutted at his back, left them to it.  It was strange to think that while he’d been holed up in Brighton, Toki was just a little kid in Norway, just a sea away – and suffering.  Pickles sank that one right down, taking a swig of his beer as he got comfortable and read the crumpled magazine, the pages draped over his hands. 

What the fuck had been so important about Brighton that he remembered it so well?  There'd been a show that night - they'd gotten high, since Brighton's dealers were already lining up with their best skag as soon as news broke that America's biggest junkie band was gonna be playing in town.  They'd been high for the interview, everything he said in this black print faded onto the yellowing tabloid paper was his junkie self, cooing and dizzy and honestly just fucking embarrassing.  Then makeup, then show, and Pickles had hit the horse so hard he was still seeing stars the next morning.

The next morning.  Something forgotten tugged at his heart for attention, something that had been sitting there since he'd registered what the magazine was but had eluded him through the holes in his mind.  Now he felt... close, like his calloused fingertips on the dry pages were brushing against it, soft and grey, a morning that was important, somehow.  He closed the magazine to check the date on the cover again - a week in early autumn, 1991.  So - and so...

"Pickles!"

Pickles looked over his shoulder abruptly, his dreads whipping around his neck as he turned to glare down at the band gathered in the centre of the room.  "What?  Fuck!" he snapped back down, and Nathan's dumb stare drilled up at him where he stood holding a beer in each fist and evidently representing the group.  Looked funny like this.  Pickles, like, never got to see him from this angle.

"Uhhh, we took a vote 'n we're, uh, gonna do the hot tub thing so, you might wanna get changed or whatever, y'know," said Nathan, and Pickles glared at him.

" _Yeah, so?_   Jesus fuck, can't you just leave me alone?"  Nathan just shrugged, so Pickles turned on the heated velour of the lounge, sitting up on his knees.  "That's a fuckin', like, request, dude.  I wanna be left alone okay.  So fuckin', get off my back."

"Are you havin' a moment," asked Nathan, then - even as Pickles sneered,  _No!_  down at him - he saw the frontman speaking out of the corner of his mouth to Skwisgaar, leaning sideways towards the Swede, " _He's havin' a moment..._ "

"What the fuck, dude!  Can't a guy get some privacy?" yelled Pickles, the magazine rolled up in his fist, and Nathan just stared up at him.

"Well, yeah, but not like, where we're gonna do the hot tub or whatever.  Uh, we took a vote --"

"Well, I didn't vote for it!"  Pickles sat back on his ass, glaring down at the gathered band.  "I thought we agreed, right,  _no votes!_   Democracy is fuckin'  _bullshit_ and I ain't havin' no part in it -- "

"Pretty sure I saw you put your hand up just then," said Nathan, and Pickles squealed with frustration.

"Fuck you!  Toki  _tricked me!_ It's  _not fair!_ " Pickles made to ditch the magazine at him in anger, but caught himself just in time.  That could have wide-reaching consequences.  Bad ones.

Below him, Murderface was squaring up with his arms crossed over his gut, looking up at Pickles and picking the best way to push him further with a cool, cattish smirk playing beneath his moustache.  "Now Picklesh.  Do you recall the conversachion, uh, kind of an isschue, that Mr Offdenschen _politely_ raisched with you at the lascht band meeting -- "

"Don't do it, pal," said Pickles warningly, pointing the magazine at the bassist.  "I'm warnin' you."

" -- Regarding 'schared schpaces'?  _Zoning concsherns?_   Schound familiar...?"

"Do  _not_  bring him into this!  I said it then and I'm sayin' it now, Murderface!  You know I need my space!  We've  _discussed this,"_ Pickles yelled down at them, and Nathan shrugged casually.

"Yeah, and we said this is community property.  Any, uh, area with a hot tub..."

" _If_  there was a zoning plan,  _which there ain’t any_ ," Pickles spat, sitting back haughtily, " _Besides_ , there ain't always a hot tub, there ain't no hot tub now, is there -- ?"

But he stopped mid-rant, hearing Skwisgaar murmuring to Toki, " _Ja, Pickle zone ams... community properties, heuheuh..._ " to Toki's squeaking giggles.

"You did not," said Pickles, pointing the magazine at them.  Skwisgaar attempted to look innocent, as much as someone with that many STDs could, and Pickles puffed up his chest in defiance.  "You did  _not_  just call me a whore.  In my own _fuckin’_ home -- "

"Well,  _train_..." said Murderface with a shrug, and, "Oh, here we go," grunted Nathan.  Pickles ignored them.

"You know I got _fuckin' flawless_  taste in both bimbos  _and_  sluts, Skwisgaar, only the tightest asses, only the biggest jugs, and that's by fuckin' _reputation_.  How fuckin' dare  _you_ , Skwisgaar, of all fuckin’ people -- !"

"Pickles," said Nathan, but Pickles wasn't listening.

" – come swannin’ up ‘ere sayin’ that I am in _any_   _way_  indiscriminate -- "

"Pickles."

Pickles turned on Nathan abruptly, sneering down at him from on high.  "You keep out of this, fatass," he snapped, and that was the final straw, furrowing Nathan's brow as he raised a confident arm to point straight at the drummer, condemning him.

"That's fucking it.  If you're gonna be a fuckin' princess you can go do it somewhere else.  Just cos you want to sit in the corner and have a little cry doesn't mean  _we_  have to fucking deal with it," said Nathan, unmoved by Pickles' wide eyes and little chirp of,  _Nathan..._ He'd made up his mind.  "We're puttin' on the hot tub, and we're gonna get some sluts and fuckin' beers on, and if you wanna go ruin _your_ night and have a big fuckin' boohoo, then you can do it  _somewhere else_."

Pickles was frozen in horror, his heart stopped at the blatant refusal of his fundamental human right to be a whingey little bitch.  He clutched the lounge around the magazine, hanging off it half on his feet, his other hand wrapped around his beer.  How was this happening?  Who gave them the  _right?_

"But," he managed, and Nathan crossed his arms definitively.

"Choose."

Pickles was disgraced.  He looked at his shoes, his face burning with the painful sting of humiliation and rejection with all their eyes on him, and said, very quietly, "Fine," as he stood up again.  He finished the beer as if that could quell the burning, and ditched the bottle into the furnace, listening for its smash somewhere deep in the flames in the silence that lingered between them.  But all it did was make him feel sick, deeply, deeply sick, and he screwed the magazine between his two fists into a tight tube as he descended.

Nathan added insult to injury by pointing to the door to their shared, makeshift quarters as he passed.  "I'm  _going!"_  he spat in return, his face bright red, and he heard Toki choke back a giggle.

"Yeah, have funs at you's, cry babies princess party, hee-hee...!"

Pickles stopped at the door, his hand on the doorway, and glared back over his shoulder at the Norwegian.  "Have fun stewin’ in Skwisgaar's precum, douchebag," he snarled, and he would have slammed the door behind him if it hadn't been automatic.  Instead, he merely hit the close button with his open palm, and then stood in the darkness just beyond when it had closed on him, staring into space as he listened to their muttering and giggles on the other side of the door, Nathan grumbling, Toki's distant,  _Err, ew, though..._

Pickles pulled himself onwards through the dark corridor, dragging the end of the rolled up magazine along the stone-lined wall like a baton as he trudged to their quarters.  The room was small and shared, with bunk-style double beds, although each hollow had a pull-down cover that could seal one off into privacy.  Pickles threw himself onto Nathan’s, his own being the one above (conversation: ‘ _Hell no dude, if it breaks, you’ll fall on me and squash me flat!’_ ) but kept the cover up, staring at the low roof of the hollow as he lay there on his back, listening to the rumbling of the train’s massive engines through the walls, trembling in the warm, still air.

He picked up the magazine, squinting at its cover through the dark, and then turned through to the article.  What was so important about the next day?  No matter how he trawled, he couldn’t get the fingers of his mind to catch on anything important in the silt and muck of his junkie years.  With a heavy, wounded sigh Pickles put the magazine across his face and rested his hands on it, breathing in the ancient print. 

’91 was seventeen years ago now.   He could see the Brighton hotel room in his mind’s eye – it was the honeymoon suite, although there were only four real _rooms_ in that hotel so there was this perception, with Snazz and Candynose in the double room and Howie and the tour manager in singles, that Pickles and Tony had lucked out.  It was not an accurate read of the situation. 

The bed was huge, something Pickles expected by that point, and white, the whole room was white.  A massive window overlooked the beach, with the sea roaring in the distance, looming, stewing grey clouds over the sand, the black ocean, the white rotting lace curtains hanging from their frames like cobwebs.  In Pickles’ memory the scene was preserved intact; there were bottles of champagne and whiskey dotted around the room, an ash tray on the sheets, glasses and lager cans and packets of cigarettes scattered over the floor, a rubber johnny – as the British girls called them – stuck to the wall with someone’s body fluids, the side tables littered with fits and lighters and spoons.

Pickles remembered that the bed was soft.  He’d woken up still high from shooting up around three, after the show and partying with some girls, and was somewhat surprised to find none of the women in the hotel with them.  He was buried in a huge puffy feather duvet with the pillows stacked high around him, his makeup caked to his face and his hair stuck to his skin and dented where his hairspray had grown sticky and stiff like toffee.  He was naked and sore, and the light suggested it was dawn until he heard on the radio that it was past one.  He remembered, rolling on his back and looking at the mould-spotted ceiling, listening to the shower going in the ensuite bathroom.  Now, why the fuck did he remember the mouldy ceiling and not his own fucking wedding day?  Man, was the brain a mystery.

The voice of the mellow British disk jockey (Pickles couldn’t pick the accent to the town, it was all just British to him) announced they were taking requests, and Pickles had mulled it over, tasting the vomit and cocaine on the back of his tongue as he rolled in the sheets.  He’d drank some flat champagne from a bottle he fished up off the carpet, slung over the edge of the bed, listening to the British bands with their funny names, and then Tony had come out of the shower.  Of course he had.  They were sharing a room.  Why was that so easy to forget...?

He’d seen Pickles move and said, “Oh, you’re awake.”  Stood at the side of the bed with the towel around his waist.  Pickles’ memory tried to put a top hat on him before he realised that was stupid; Tony’s hair had been dank and wet from the shower, tussled with the towel and shining blue black as he’d dyed it from the drab brown-black and a stray gray or two – like Pickles’ ember red, so Tony’s hair tended to be scaled up to sheer purple in the US press.  Pickles had grinned at him from where he was laid on the bed and wiggled in the duvet, and he remembered (not without embarrassment) reaching out to snag Tony’s towel and try to pull it from his waist, the other man easily batting off his questing fingers.

“You little shit!”  Tony had started sounding more British since they’d been there, his family from Birmingham originally – see, Pickles remembered that – and Pickles was very taken by the twang, thought it was real cute.  It brought out the cheekiness in him.  He’d dropped down on the side of the bed and bounced Pickles with his weight, catching him around the shoulders in a headlock and wrestling him, kicking and laughing, in the sheets.

“Fuck, fuck!  Okay, okay, fuck, white flag Tones!  I’m out, I’m out!”  Tony only released him after hearing _white flag_ , Pickles panting on his back as Tony sat back and gathered his thoughts – difficult since Pickles had gotten in an insane backwards kick to his skull mid-wrassle.  Pickles looked up at him from the mattress, and indicated with a curling finger to his towel.  “Now gimme your towel so I can throw it in.”

Tony picked up a pillow and dropped it over Pickles’ face.  “Cheeky bugger.”  But he was grinning around it, watching Pickles as he writhed in the covers and threw the pillow off his face, flushed and giggling.  When he surfaced again, Tony was combing his hair with a round brush he’d found amongst their rubbish, and Pickles popped up behind him as if he were parting the waves of a huge white ocean.

“They’re takin’ requests, on the radio, y’know,” Pickles said, and Tony looked over his shoulder at him, his wet hair held flat over his hand with the other raking the brush through his locks.

“Hmm?  Oh.”

“You wanna request somethin’, Tones?”  Pickles lay down on the bed again to watch him, his arms around a pillow and his chin sunk into the pillowcase, his dried eyeliner flaking on his cheeks and the white fabric.  Tony only laughed, shook his head.

“Wouldn’t know what to ask for.”

“Bo- _ring_.”  Pickles put out a hand, ran his finger down the smooth white skin of Tony’s back.  Unlike Pickles, the bassist _was_ like porcelain, a kind of yellow base to his skin that made him look green under fluorescent lights.  “Did we fuck last night?” he asked, looking up at Tony, and the man shrugged, his broad shoulders lifting, faced away from Pickles.

“Probably, I dunno.”

“Feels like it.”  And it did.

“Then I guess so.”  Tony’s brush hit a snag and he grabbed it in his fingers, tearing at the knot with the brush cruelly.  Pickles rolled in the covers, listening to the radio, the surf, Candynose and Snazz’s voices across the corridor.

“You wanna go again?” he asked sweetly, and Tony gave an amused snort.

“God, no.”

“Oh.  Okay.”  Pickles just shrugged, though it felt like a needle through his heart.  He knew Tony didn’t mean it like that, watched him tear out the knot with his fingers and stick it to the brush before abandoning it with the fits and razorblades.

“I feel like I got hit by a fucking semi,” said the bassist, stretching his arms over his head, and then turned and crawled onto the bed with Pickles, laying on his shoulder beside him and gazing at him with those big half-moon eyes he had, sleepy and bearing dark rings from the late nights and jetlag.  Pickles snickered at him, poked his nose with a finger playfully, Tony wrinkling it in response like he’d sneeze the cocaine and nasal lining straight back onto Pickles.

“Sure looks like it,” Pickles said, and then sat up, looking out the window at the beach, the seagulls bobbing on the strong breeze in the distance.  “I’m gonna ring the station.  What’s this guy’s name again?”

“Fluff.”  Somehow Tony always knew that kind of bullshit.  It was him who knew what station the Saturday rock programme was on in the first place, had switched to it before his shower.  Pickles was already up and looking for the phone, craning over the edge of the bed and trying to spot it in the trash and abandoned clothes, bottles of hairspray, compacts – amazing what a mess one could make in a single night. 

“Fluff.  Stupid name.”  Pickles managed to find the cord, and followed it around the edge of the bed hooked over his fingers before resorting to just hauling on it, pulling the phone up onto the sheets with them.  When he looked over his shoulder for approval, Tony was leaning on his elbow, head in his hand and watching him.

“So’s Pickles,” he observed, then clocked Pickles’ questing look, receiver in hand, and said, “81199, Pickles.  But you should wait it out for Peel.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”  Pickles was already turning the rotary on the phone, receiver held up to his ear.  Tony shrugged, sniffed back the snot from his nose as he lay there and watched Pickles.  Pickles fixed him with a sharp eye, listening for the dial tone.  “I wanna, so I’m gonna,” he said.  In this lifetime, he had talked like a child to Tony, something in hindsight he found disgusting. 

“Well aware of that,” said Tony, leaning on his hand.  “I ain’t stoppin’ ya.”

The phone was answered by a secretary or something, and Pickles just smiled into the receiver, more for Tony’s favour than the woman’s, and informed her who was calling.  “Yeah, Snakes N’ Barrels.  Yeah, for real.  Yeah.  Heh, yeah.”  The ensuing panic on the other end of the line amused him greatly, and he held it away from his mouth and covered the receiver with a hand as he hung on the line.

“She says I just gotta wait for the slot to finish,” he told Tony, and the guy smirked at him.

“Still say you should wait for Peel.”

“So, we’ll call him later?  We can do that, we’re Snakes N’ Barrels.  But today’s my day, and I wanna hear Hanoi Rocks.”  And oh shit.  That was why it was important.  Oh, _shit._

Tony gave a little snort at the name and rolled his eyes.  “Every day is your day, Pickles,” he said, and rolled onto his back, looking soft and pale in the overcast light through the window.

“Yeah, but today is extra my day.”  When Tony turned his head to look at him curiously, Pickles widened his eyes with an expectant cock of his chin, as if Tony surely should have known this by now.  “It’s my birthday, dumbass.”

“Oh, fuck!  Really?” grunted Tony, and Pickles wasn’t sure but you know, it was around now and today was as good as any.  Nah, he was _pretty sure_ it was today.  “How old?” asked the bassist, staring at him, and Pickles looked down at him, raking his fingers through his matted red hair.

“Twenny.”

“No shit!”  Pickles rolled his eyes at the huge grin that split Tony’s face, lolling there on the sheets before him with his trackmarks and wet hair.  “Holy crap, Pickles, that’s it, it’s over!  You ain’t a teenager no more!”

“Yeah.”  Pickles listened to the receiver and smirked to himself, casting a sly look at Tony.  “One more year and I can finally drink...”  And that made the bassist laugh, first a rumble deep in his chest, then bubbling up out of him in uproarious chuckles, cackling, filling the background as Pickles’ attention was sucked back down the line with the DJ’s voice, doubled on the radio on their bedside table.

_And I’m told we’ve got a very special guest joining us on the line... someone sneaking in like a sssssssnake in the grass... as you do... from their first ever British tour.  Sure to be barrels of fun.  Yeah, hello, calling from Brighton we have...?_

“Yeah, hi there, Fluff!  This is Pickles, yeah, Snakes N’ Barrels, yeah!  Nice lil’ show you got here, me an’ Tony’ve been listenin’ all mornin’!” he said, watching as Tony smothered his laughter and lolled there, grinning wildly at Pickles from the sheets.

 _Oh yeah, he’s the drummer, right?_   Pickles saw Tony’s sour face, but made no move to correct the DJ.  _That’s brilliant, great to hear from you boys.  You played the Elephant last night, right?_

“Yeeep, that’s right.  Great gig, great gig, you Brits sure know how to rock,” schmoozed Pickles, and the DJ laughed at him.

_Mammoth, would you say... haha.  That’s fab, that’s fab, and on to Bristol tomorrow?_

“Well, Fluff, generally I just get on the bus and they carry me to the next venue, y’know?  Now, you do requests, don’t ya, dude?”

_That’s my game, lad, and what were you after this fine Saturday afternoon?_

Pickles leaned over Tony, widening his eyes, and hissed, “ _What do I want?”_ at him.  Tony just regarded him under sleepy eyes.

“Hanoi Rocks, right?” he said, and reached up to flick one of Pickles’ nipple piercings, and Pickles pouted down at him.

“Yeah, but – ”

_Mm, Pickles?  Still there?_

“Uhhhh sure am, Fluffy!  Just havin’ a lil’ band meetin’, y’know how it is... see, it’s like this, man, I know _who_ I wanna hear, but I ain’t got a clue which track!”

_Well, give us a hint and we’ll see what we can do for you, err, ‘Pickles’._

Pickles leaned forward on his hand, gazing out the window as he cooed into the phone, “I wanna hear Hanoi Rocks!”

 _Ha, of bloody course you do.  Like dogs up each other’s arses, aren’t you lot..._ said the DJ, and Pickles squeaked, “Huh?” as Tony started to laugh again, holding a pillow over his own face to smother his chuckles.

_Nothing, nothing.  We’ll sort that out for you, boyo, not a problem.  Best of luck with your roundabout on Old Blighty, eh?_

“Yeah... thanks?” said Pickles, mystified, and then when the DJ didn’t address him again, hung up.  He looked at Tony, the bassist still choking on his laughter and clutching the pillow to his chest, and then perked up as he heard the trademark riffs of _Nothing New_  over the tiny radio.  Tony smiled at him, trailing the back of his fingers over Pickles’ chest gently.

“Proud of yourself?” he said, lounging catlike in the pillows, and Pickles gazed down at him under his eyelashes, the mascara caked onto them in thick clumps.

“Hell yeah.”

“Twenty, huh.”  Tony heaved a sigh, and Pickles was vacantly aware he was being stared at, that dumbass way Tony always stared at him, so much like a woman.  He pursed his lips in return.

“Yeah.”  Pickles sniffed, sitting on his knees.  “Never, eh... thought I’d get to twenny, Tones.”  Tony’s caressing fingers brushed the healing cuts on Pickles’ bare wrist, then pulled back to settle on his cheek instead as Pickles closed his eyes in defiance.  He didn’t mind mentioning it, once in a blue moon, but he resented having it drawn to his attention.

“Don’t gimme that face.  C’mon.  You’re here, that’s all that matters, bro.”  Tony sat up, cupping Pickles’ face and bringing him close by his jaw to kiss lightly, take advantage of his pouted lips which Pickles held out on, pressing them tightly together.  “C’mon, Pickles.  Don’t do that to your pretty lips, c’mon, bro.”

Talking to him like a woman.  Pickles hadn’t been able to tell what made it feel not quite right at the time, same as the baby talk he pulled himself whenever he wanted to get laid.  Being groomed, he thought now with an intense bitterness, manipulated, by people who wanted to just fuck a child.  Tried to keep him as a child as long as they could, plushed out the illusion – but then, in his more forgiving hours, only since he’d passed thirty-five, Pickles was able to recognise now that he _had been_ a child.  Really.  And even though it felt stupid... Tony had just wanted to make him feel loved, and if the only people he knew how to love were women, then a woman he’d make Pickles, too.

With Tony’s thumb grazing his lip and Hanoi Rocks on the radio, Pickles had finally given in and kissed him.  He had not required much convincing after all.  And in the present, Pickles lifted the magazine off his face to wipe the tears away from where they stang at his eyes with his sweatband.  He stared into the dark and then screwed up his face in an awful leer, curling his lip as he felt the dreadful snakes move nauseous in his gut, tightening around his heart at something he could as easily have put his hands on as he could have slung his arms around the memory.

It was fucking dumb as shit to get upset about the past, after all, it was past.  That was the fucking point.  That Tony didn’t exist anymore, had never _really_ existed except in Pickles’ naïve mind, a kid’s mind.  He knew that, from the gutters of the junk sickness, from the heroin balls and court cases and his stale, paunchy adult life, a wife and kids in the suburbs, his stupid house without even a fucking air conditioner installed when Pickles had rolled up for rehearsal after all those years, somehow hoping for something better than “Hey, bro.”  As if.  And then the drug, that had somehow glanced through Pickles’ veins like chemical fire and never left a scar, but ruined the others – just... ruined them.

Pickles stared into the dark with red eyes, and suddenly he was in the band room with the guys, gazing past them vacant as they replayed the last moments of the live album with all the channels levelled and mixed, and giggling through his teeth at Tony’s muttered, _I’m a chicken.  I’m a chicken.  I believe I’m a chicken_.  And hell, it had been really fucking funny at the time, after having to put up with that sober cunt for a fucking month.  But now... oh... _now..._

There was a bang at the door which could only be Nathan, pounding his meaty fist on it.  Pickles looked up, feeling the acid lurch up his throat, but he’d locked the door on his way in.  Nathan just banged at it again.  _Pickles?_ he called, and Pickles yelled back at him: “Leave me the _fuck_ alone!”

 _Hey, man.  You’re being a real asshole, you know that,_ said Nathan, and then marched off again.  Pickles lay there in the dark, his breath starting to heave as the pressure built inside him, and then let off with a scream as he lifted his legs and kicked up against the bottom of his own bunk, curling his nails into the mattress below him as if he was holding on for dear life.

“God!  God!  _Fuck!_   God!” he wailed, and then fell back, panting.  He screwed up his face and squealed from the back of his throat, desperate to exorcise some of the nameless, fucking _pointless_ demons that curled around his innards.  “Oh, fuck!  Oh god, oh... _gooood._ ”  And he did feel better, even if it was... you know... barely.

As he was lying there panting and swallowing back bile, his feet propped up above him and pushed against the top bunk, there came another knock at the door, this one measured and calm.  It could only mean one thing.  Quoth the manager, _Pickles?_

Pickles did not tell Charles he could come in, but he came in anyway.  The manager could override the electronic locks with his own finger prints like a living masterkey, a whole band decision that had never been overturned – they all trusted him to respect when they truly wanted them locked.  And he did, generally.  When Charles considered something an emergency, even when you hadn’t initially thought it so, one was inclined to agree with him if only from experience.

“Pickles,” he said again when the door had opened, and Pickles looked over from the bed, squinting against the light and sniffing back the mucus that had gathered in his face with his tears.

“Yeah,” he said, and Charles stood just inside the doorway, regarding him from a distance.

“Everything, ah... okay down here?”  It was barely a question.  Pickles’ face was wet with tears and his ears rang, his nose leaked snot; he was obviously a wreck.  But Charles pretended.  He always pretended.

“Yeah,” said Pickles again and turned his head to look up at the roof, anywhere but Charlie.  “Nathan send you in to check on me?”

“That’s right.”  It was not as if Charles could tell a lie, but... even for Charlie, he was being warmer than he usually was with them, going on with a shrug, “Well, the words he used were, ah... ‘Something’s wrong with,’ ah, ‘Pickles,’ ah, ‘Really antagonistic, y’know,’ ah... ‘We have sluts and he loves sluts,’ ah... ‘Having a moment’.”

Pickles just snorted at this, glaring at the ceiling.  “He doesn’t give a shit, does he,” he said rudely, and Charles might have sighed, if he was the kind of man to sigh.

“Not really, no.”

“Good.”  Pickles shut his eyes.  “That’s good.”  That was what he wanted, at this stage of his life.

Charles, on the other hand, gave a great deal of a shit, except when he didn’t – always hard to tell which was which, but now seemed like the former.  He leaned in slightly, his features hidden by the light at his back save for the cut of his suit and the warp of his glasses, and said softly, invitingly, “Do you want to, ah... tell me what’s wrong, Pickles?”

Pickles thought he sounded uncomfortable, inviting _feelings_ to the table, and decided he only wanted to make him feel worse.  But his mind was a mess, and when he did look across to Charles, his hands fidgeting in front of his chest, all that would come out was, “He’s a, uh... a goddamn chicken, Charlie.”

Charles pulled a face.  “Ah, well.  No helping that, is there,” he said, and Pickles pursed his lips thoughtfully.  Guy had a point – or he did, until he said, “I’m afraid Nathan is the way he is... take it or leave it,” and Pickles realised he hadn’t been able to read his mind, not even a little bit.  The fallible Charles.  Always weird to see.

“No, not Nate—” But Pickles swallowed it back mid-sentence, too late to stop Charles from realising his mistake and flash a more sympathetic frown.  “Forget it,” said Pickles, and because Charles could be trusted, he would.

“The guys are just about to order out for pizza.  They were wondering if you’d like to join them,” said the manager woodenly, working off an internal script, and Pickles sighed at him and dropped his legs down off the top bunk to the mattress again, slowly slinging them sideways off the bed to sit up.

“Yeah, okay... I guess that sounds fun,” he said, which was all that Charles wanted and he knew it.  The manager moved out of his way as he went to stand, wiping his face one final time with his wristband and snorting back the snot into his throat for swallowing, but Pickles lingered a moment, thinking about it.

“Charlie.  Can I ask you a favor?” he said, looking up at the man, and Charles lifted his eyebrows just a touch.

“What can I do for you, Pickles?”  And Pickles knew he could ask for anything, anything in the world.

“I need you to... get me some acid.  Some real heavy shit, none of these four hunny micro-Gs, you dig?  And maybe about, oh, seventy grapefruits.  It’s, uh.  It’s a Hunter S Thompson kinda night, y’know what I mean?” 

Charles barely twitched at the request, even when Pickles tapped him on the chest with the rolled up magazine.  “Seventy grapefruits.  Whole or, ah... sliced?” he asked, and Pickles thought hard about it.

“Whole, and a - I want a machete.”

“Got it.”

“And, uh...” Pickles paused, holding the end of the magazine to Charles’ lapel, and then pushed it towards him, the manager’s hand wrapping around it automatically.  “I need you to get rid of this.  _Don’t_ read it.  Just destroy it, ‘kay?”

Charles barely looked down at the magazine before he folded the tube in half in his hands, damaging the cover irreparably.  “I think I can do that,” he said, and Pickles held up a finger to him.

“Uh-uh, say the thing.”  He watched with half a grin as Charles almost smiled back at him, leaning away from him to avoid too much intimacy.

“That’s, ah... doable, Pickles.”

“Good man.”  The drummer patted Charles on the shoulder, and then left him to it, wandering back down the corridor with a spring in his step.  When he reached the main room again, the hot tub was going, the whole band sitting in it and waiting for him, raising their glasses with a woop of greeting as he entered the room.

He was going to get fucking obliterated. 

**Author's Note:**

> comment or kudos, every bit of feedback helps :)


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